Bedford Driving Lessons

His story will enrage homeowners. A doctor who’s spent years fighting attempts to fine him for parking his scooter on his own land lost a court ruling that means YOU could now be fined for parking on your own drive Two years ago, I received a parking ticket on my scooter. Nothing remarkable about that, you might think, but here’s the catch: it was parked on land I owned at the time. That one ticket turned out to be the first step in a £10,000 legal battle, which has made me despair at the state of our ramshackle parking laws. Along the way, I have discovered a world of greedy and despotic traffic wardens, driven by petty bureaucrats drunk on power. In the course of my long and painful journey, I found out that – astonishingly – it can be illegal to park on your own land if it is not separated from the road by a physical barrier. Indeed, a ruling made in my court case last week means that your driveway or front garden could now be preyed on by traffic wardens, even if it is clearly private property. So just how did I come to discover these unpleasant truths? In 2007, I parked my scooter outside my office in central London, as I had done many times before. I had just returned from an emergency dash to my clinic, where I work as a doctor specialising in travel medicine. Later, I found a penalty notice, issued by Camden Council, across its instrument panel. At first, I was merely annoyed. The parking space was clearly private, on a Tarmac area. It had been behind iron railings until a redevelopment in the mid-Nineties, and is clearly marked on the deeds of the property that I own. For further clarity, a sign politely declared: ‘This forecourt is private property and is not dedicated as a public footway.’ More